If Your Husband Lies About Small Things, You Need This

Welcome to betrayal trauma recovery. This is Anne. I have interviewed over 200 women and all of

them told me there were things that they wish they had known and then they described me what those

were. I put all of that information in my workshop clarity after betrayal. It's inexpensive and it's

what over 200 women told me they wished they knew. They were desperate to let you know this because

they didn't want any woman to go through what they had gone through. Most of them went through

multiple therapists and knowing what they know now would have saved them years of pain and chaos.

Go to btr.org slash workshop to learn more. Many of you listening need immediate emotional support.

We are here for you every day and access to our daily group sessions includes a once a month Q&A

with me and special sessions about topics that matter most to you. Unlike other therapists or help

where you have to explain to them what's going on and most of the time they don't quite understand

it, we actually know how to help you right away. To see our group session schedule go to btr.org slash

group. Why your husbands small lies matter more than you think. If your husband lies about small

things, here's why it's not a small problem. A lot of women in our community talk about how they

started noticing that their husband lied about small things but they dismissed it because in general

he was a great guy. I started noticing it when my husband's stories didn't quite add up but since

he was in therapy, I figured everything would get worked out. There were times when he denied flat

out that he had said something when I knew he had said it. I found myself wondering is this what

all marriages are like and since he wasn't therapy and going to addiction recovery, I figured I

needed to be patient with his recovery process. One of the hardest parts of living with deception

is that clarity doesn't come all at once. It usually doesn't arrive with a big confession or

undeniable proof. It comes in fragments, moments that are easy to dismiss, especially when your

goal is to hold your family together, like mine was. One woman in our community who will call

Jenna to protect her identity put it this way. I thought this is not normal, this isn't ideal,

this isn't necessarily a good thing but because he told me he loved me, maybe this isn't that big

of a deal. That explains why so many thoughtful, capable women stay confused for so long, me included.

It's not because we were in denial, but because it's nearly impossible to see clearly,

when you're in a pattern that alternates between hurtful behavior and reassuring gestures,

between small lies and moments that seem like progress. Before we get to our interview,

so that I can continue to bring you this important information for free, please like and subscribe

to my channel and if you'd like to donate to support this podcast, click the join button

where you can make a small monthly donation. No matter how small, every donation helps.

Like me, you'll hear in this interview that Jenna didn't come to clarity because her marriage

suddenly got worse. She found clarity when she finally had language for the patterns and she

could see how the small lies really revealed something much bigger. So let's get into it,

welcome Jenna. Thank you Anne. Jenna and I have been interacting on social media for quite a long

time. On social media, we take the concepts that I teach here on the podcast and make

visual representations of these concepts. Usually through infographics, but every once in a while,

I hop on and do a video. One of the infographics I posted was an epiphany for Jenna. It helped

her see that her husband had been lying about small things, which distracted her from realizing

he was also lying about big things. So that you can see it, I've put this infographic on this

episode on our website, BTR.org. So again, search for this episode and you will see it embedded in

the transcription there. Speaking of social media on Facebook, you can find me at betrayal,

trauma recovery, or BTR.org. I'm also on Instagram at BTR.org underscore TikTok at BTR.org.

And if you search BTR.org on YouTube, you'll find me there. If you want to comment anonymously

on any particular episode, let's say this one, go to our website BTR.org and in the search bar,

put in the title of the episode. So for this one, it would be my husband lies about small things.

This episode will come up. You can see the transcription and scroll down to the bottom and comment

anonymously about what you think. I always love your comments. I interact with women on the website

all the time. I also interact with women on social media. So you're following me on social media.

We're interacting online and then you see this infographic. What happened next?

It resonated with me instantly. I thought we had hard times, but things are still getting better.

I thought we were on that upper trajectory. But when I saw it on Instagram, it just suddenly

clicked for me. It has two different graphs. One says what I thought my marriage was and it shows

a graph that goes up and down, but it has a trajectory that's going up. And it says healthy, hard,

healthy, hard. Yeah, it's kind of like a stock market graph. It's going up in general and healthy

is when it goes up and hard is when it dips down and when it goes back up, it goes even higher.

It captures the experience that I had exactly. Then underneath what I thought my marriage was,

it says what it really was. Instead of the healthy and hard, healthy and hard points, it's actually

grooming and abuse, grooming and abuse. The grooming just gets more extreme and the abuse

stays the same. So it's not that the marriage is improving. It's that the grooming is just

improving and abuse is still there. The abuse is actually probably getting worse,

but you can't go lower in a graph. So I created this infographic because that was my experience.

I thought as we did pornography addiction recovery and we went to all these therapists and

either 12 stuff and all the stuff that we would take a step forward and then two steps back because

the pornography addiction recovery industrial complex told me he's going to have relapses and

progress, not perfection. I thought, oh, we are improving over time, but of course it's not just

going to be a perfectly straight line to success. We're going to have ups and downs along the way

when I took a step back and realized it was abuse. I realized I was just going around in circles.

It wasn't ever actually making progress. I was just experiencing abuse and being groomed.

Let's talk about the factors that would lead a woman to think that these are just the regular

ups and downs of either marriage in general or the ups and downs of being in a relationship with

a man who is addicted to pornography or maybe has a mental health issue. I think for me, the

actions he was doing were positive. He was going to church. He participated in an addiction

recovery group. He did all of the things that you would think of when you think of improving

even times when he would apologize or times when he would not gaslight me. I thought that was

positive and thought maybe that was improvement. Congratulations, you didn't lie, I'm so proud of you.

Seriously, I would be like, wow, he just took money out of my wallet and didn't think I saw, but

he didn't try to convince me that didn't do that. As long as you're going to a group, a therapy,

a church, there's this idea that just doing those things equals I'm a good person.

I think there's also this societal idea that everything is fixable. As long as you're willing to

work on it and you go to therapy, of course, there's going to be a solution. A lot of people go

right to he needs therapy or he needs an addiction recovery program rather than thinking, whoa,

we need to get you emotionally and psychologically safe. I was talking to my uncle the other day

about my ex telling him some of the details and he was shocked. And then at five o'clock in the

morning, the next day, he emailed me and he said, and your ex needs a treatment program. And

I just laughed. I was like, that's what I thought. And so that's why I got him into a treatment program.

But because he's abusive, treatment didn't help him. And no one told me it was abuse, which is why

I'm doing this podcast. Yeah, I also think there's an idea that marriage is hard. No one's perfect.

As long as he's working on it by going to a treatment center or going to therapy or whatever he

may be doing, as long as he's doing those things, then you just have to stick it out. Those kinds of

ideas, at least were in my mind, and made it difficult for me to even consider the option that

maybe not all marriages are of this heart, maybe not all marriages are abusive. I think that's

one idea that kept me stuck. Even if you know it's abuse, then you're like, wow, it's abuse.

Okay, we need to get him into therapy because he's abusive because he has childhood trauma,

or he feels shame. I don't think they realize that's not why he's abusive. Number one,

and therapy will not help. Most therapists think, oh, I can help. They don't realize they're

going to get manipulated and gaslit themselves. I don't know if it's an ego thing, but therapists

don't tend to realize that they are unable to help abusers. Because the prevailing opinion of

everyone is that therapy is going to solve this. That's why I work so hard to educate all women

about this. So I hope the infographics help. I took many of them and I put them in the back of

trauma mama husband drama, which is my picture book for adults. It's available at btr.org slash

books. It's also available on Amazon. It's a picture book, so it's also this visual representation

of what it's like to be emotionally and psychologically abused and sexually coerced and not realize

what's happening. Teaching these concepts in a way that women can actually apply is my top

priority. And so that's why social media is so important because I can post those visual

representations there. As you've been interacting with me on social media, what's your take on why

these are so helpful for victims? I know for me, when I learned the term betrayal trauma,

it was so validating and so empowering because it gave me language for the experience I was going

through. The infographics do something similar for me. I feel they capture my experience in a way

sometimes I'm unable to describe with words. It's way for me to share with other people what I

might be feeling. It's very therapeutic. It's visual. It's simplified and it's aesthetically pleasing.

Yeah, having it be cute doesn't hurt. So the process is like I have an idea in my head. I podcast

about it. Then I draw like a pathetic stick figure. And then my amazing friend who's an illustrator

and graphic designer, she brings these to life. She's incredible. And then she and I go back and forth

through so many different iterations to make sure the concept is really clear. And then I always

revisit them maybe six months or a year or two years later. I look out again and I'm like, oh,

I need to alter this a little bit. I'm always getting feedback on them and making updates.

So when you say an infographic that I created that I posted helped you realize that you're

has been lying about the small things indicated a much bigger thing that warms my heart.

It was so easy for me to overlook the experiences I've gone through that were emotionally abusive

and think why doesn't punch me? He doesn't hurt me physically. It's not that bad. But when I see it

in the infographic, it's so obvious. It's apparent what I am experiencing is emotional abuse.

It's damaging. And I'm being stuck to this abuse cycle of grooming and devaluing. It just makes

it so clear for me and helps me to navigate my next steps to safety. I've taken the BTR workshop.

The workbook that comes with the workshop had so many visuals and beautiful artwork.

It captures the reality of my situation. It's simple and easy to understand and helps me

that I just make my own experience. I really appreciated that.

I'm so glad to hear that. That's awesome. I've taken so many trainings or workshops and I was

so confused most of the time. I always felt like, am I doing it wrong? Is it me? And then I realized,

no, it's just not detailed. It's not clear. It doesn't give me a way to process it. It doesn't

give me a way to interact with it. And so just like everything else at BTR, I test everything

for years, years and years with the betrayal trauma recovery workshop. I first used the strategies

myself to deliver my kids and I from the abuse. I wanted to make sure it wasn't a fluke. So I

duplicated that success with other women. And then we created a workshop out of it. We ran that

workshop live for a few years to get feedback to know where we're women getting stuck, what parts

weren't clear. And then created all the videos for the format that it's in now online. And those

videos are incredible because it has visual representations for all of these concepts to help

women really get it. And then I continue to tweak it and tweak it and tweak it. I have a master's

degree in curriculum and instruction. So I'm obsessed with making sure that the content that we

produce is clear and helpful and that the services we provide are exactly what women need.

Yeah, the workshop for me was invaluable. I felt like I learned so much about specific actions

I could take and specific situations. They were super helpful. I am so glad to hear that. I

hear that from women every day. How much it helped them. So as Jenna and I were interacting on

social media, she told me something that made me think that my French fry analogy would help her

realize what was really happening. This analogy helps illustrate that when a husband lies about small

things, it's really evidence that something way bigger is going on. So here's the analogy. He comes

up to you and says, you know what? I have been eating at McDonald's too much and it's not healthy

for me. It's bothering me. I don't really like it. So I'm just letting you know that I'm not going

to ever eat at McDonald's again. Ever. You as the supportive wife would be like, sounds great,

honey. This is not that important of a thing. You're like, okay, you do you. Good for you. I think

doesn't say anything else about it. Three weeks later, you have to use his car for something.

You get in his car and you're fumbling around with a quarter and it falls down in a crack

and as you're trying to get the quarter, you find a French fry. That French fry is unmistakable.

It is in McDonald's French fry. You get your quarter out, you get the French fry out and you go to

your husband and you say, hey, honey, unless this quarter and when I found it, I also found this

French fry. Now, if he's a super healthy person, he might say something like, I know I told you that

I wanted to stop eating at McDonald's, but I went to McDonald's three days ago when I had that

long drive and yeah, one of them fell down on the crack and as far as me falling off the wagon,

I feel really stupid about it. This is not an abuse episode. This situation where he wanted to

stop eating McDonald's and then he fell off the wagon is not that big of a deal. He wasn't trying

to deceive you. He wasn't trying to hide it from you on purpose. When you asked him about the

French fry, he readily admitted that he fell off the wagon and went to McDonald's. Now, let's pretend

that whole scenario is the same, but instead when you find the French fry and you take it to him

and say, I found this French fry, he says, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't see a

French fry and then you're like, this French fry, this one right here, I found this in the car and he's

like, well, one of the kids must have gotten my car and dropped it in there. With that same scenario,

if he starts gaslighting and lying, he's not a healthy person. Even if this is just about a French

fry, deceit, gaslighting, turning the tables, this would be psychological and emotional abuse.

And to take it even further, if he was saying, why are you going through my car? Why are you trying

to check up on me? Maybe even I never told you I wasn't going to eat at McDonald's. Of course,

I'm going to eat at McDonald's. Why would you even think that I wouldn't eat at McDonald's?

So there's the French fry analogy. How is this analogy helped you?

I think it captured what was happening for me. Like you said, they were small or they can be

smaller situations. It wasn't necessarily porn because at the time he was lying and I didn't know he

was using porn. But there were other situations where I would overhear him telling a story I

had never heard before. And later I might approach him and say, oh, I never knew you've been to

London. And he would say, I never said I've gone to London, but I can look back and see the pattern

of different French fries I was finding. My ex did that too. There was this period of time where

at dinner parties or social events, I would look out of the corner of my eye and he was doing

these Tai Chi moves and he would talk to people about how much he loved Tai Chi. He was some kind of

Tai Chi master. So after a while, I was very curious. So I said, how do you know so much about Tai Chi?

And he kind of avoided answering me. And so then I got real specific and I said, did you take Tai Chi

in college? And he said, no, did you take it in high school? No. Did you take it at a gym? No.

Have you read a book about Tai Chi? No. Have you ever taken a Tai Chi class anywhere in any way,

shape or form? No. Have you done Tai Chi in a park? You know how there's like those old people in a

park? Have you done Tai Chi in a park? No. Maybe on vacation? No. I was dumbfounded. He's a

liar. So I don't know why he didn't just lie. But in this moment, for some reason, he wanted me

to know. I still don't know why he wanted me to know because he had no problem lying when he wanted

to. And finally he said, and maybe this was a lie too. He said, I read an article about it once.

Like one article is what he said. And he could even be lying about that. Maybe he never even read

one article about it. It was crazy. So instead of just saying, I read an article about Tai Chi

and I'm interested in maybe taking a class sometime. No. One article made him apparently an expert

in Tai Chi. So if he's lying about traveling to London or Tai Chi or a French fry, it indicates

that something really serious is happening, but it's so hard for us to recognize that.

For me, I feel like I didn't have proof. Everything inside me was saying something

here is wrong. This is not normal to lie about going on a trip to the London. My brain would say,

he's not using porn because he said he wasn't using it. I could think of way worse things he could

be doing. Maybe this isn't that big of a deal. And I think it was easy to rationalize it to say,

this is not normal. This isn't ideal. This isn't necessarily a good thing, but because he told me he

loved me. He later admitted it to me. It's still progress. Back to that upper trajectory graph

in the infographic. Yeah, totally. After I was separated, I was talking to my dentist and I said,

I didn't realize it was abuse. I mean, he had stopped screaming and yelling in my face and I saw

that as progress. And my dentist was like, what? What are you talking about? I know my dentist

really well. I went to high school with him. And he just looked at me and he was like,

a good person would never do that. Like ever. My dentist couldn't really wrap his head around.

The fact that victims are manipulated to think it's just a lie about this one thing. He realized

you couldn't scream and yell in your face. So then he started lying to you. That's not progress.

But now taking a step back is really a gut punch to realize that he wasn't changing and things

were not improving. That upward trajectory was not happening. He was just changing up his abuse

tactics. When I look back on my experience, these little breadcrumbs, I thought were the

improvements, the little things he would do I would see as progress. I imagine myself standing

outside of my house in a hurricane's lightning rain and crazy wind. My hair is flying everywhere

and debris flying all around me. I imagine the storm around me being the abuse I was experiencing.

Then I imagine putting my hands over my head just a little bit as progress. That's a small

improvement from not having any protection, but it's something. The only thing that really

created safety for me was walking to my house, stepping inside and closing the door. I can look

out the window and see the crazy storm that was going on outside, but it wasn't hurting me anymore.

And I think that's the only time I could really see the abuse for what it was. Because in a moment,

I felt at least my hands are over my head. I've got a little bit of protection. I didn't really

understand how much danger I really was in until I was in a safe place and I could look back and

see how dangerous it actually was. Oh, I like that analogy. I wonder if part of it is the adrenaline

of the chaos. You might not realize how cold you are until you get inside. And then you're like,

oh, I was really cold and miserable. But in the moment, you're just trying to make it down the

mountain or survive, which is why people call abuse victims survivors because every day they're

surviving. They're in this sort of mental and emotional and psychological life and death situation.

And every day they're surviving. That's why they're called survivors even if they're still in

the abuse because they're surviving one day at a time. But we need to ask ourselves, wait a minute,

do I just want to be in survival mode every single day? Do I really want to be in that type of chaos

all the time? Or do I want to actually be able to be safe and rest in my warm house with a cup of hot

chocolate? And so to help ourselves make our way to safety, that french fry analogy comes in handy

because if something happens, we can think to ourselves, okay, if this were just about a french fry,

would it still be severe and intense emotional and psychological abuse?

If someone is willing to completely deny lie, gaslight, blame shift about a french fry, which is

not that big of a deal. That's a really big warning sign that they are emotionally and psychologically

dangerous. I want all the listeners to consider things that you may have thought. That's not that

big of a deal. When he denied you had a conversation about changing the oil or picking up milk from

the store, it's not only emotionally and psychologically abusive in and of itself. It's only the part

of the iceberg you can see and there is way way more beneath the surface that you can't see.

Circling back to social media, for you, why has following BTR on social media interacting

with me and engaging with other women been useful to you? I love to listen to the podcast and

love getting bite-sized pieces of information every day. I can get on and digest one little topic,

a quote or a thought. It's something for me to think about that day. It's a way for me to learn more

about abuse. It's been so helpful to me. That reminds me of one of my good friends in real life.

We were friends long before I started podcasting. She's been in several abusive relationships,

but for me, talking to her was always really awkward because for her, it felt safer to pull away

from the pain and not really consider that it could be abuse. So as we would talk, I would think,

I have the perfect podcast about this. I should tell her about it, but I would hold back as much

as I could. Our sons were on the same baseball team, so we'd sit together every week and just chat

while our sons were playing baseball. And at one game, she was telling me about her ex and I was

thinking, oh, this is abuse. How can I help her understand this since she's not interested in

listening to the podcast? She loves Instagram. So I said, hey, I'm on Instagram. Let's follow

each other. And the next week at the baseball game, she was like, oh, I've been learning all this stuff.

I realized that my ex is abusive. In my head, I'm thinking, I know, I've been trying to tell you

that. I was actually a little frustrated and confused. And apparently she wasn't interested in

listening to me try to educate her about abuse in person. When it came down to it, the only thing

that mattered to me was that she started opening up to the idea that these men she had been dating

were abusive. Then I saw the beauty of it because she's not into podcasts. For her, the little

bite size pieces were what helped her realize what had been happening. Some women have a hard time

leaning into the pain because that doesn't feel safe. And so just a little bit at a time is helpful

to them. Every woman is different. On social media, we're all equal. We can interact with other

women who have been through it. Jenna, thanks for sharing that story about how my post on Instagram

helped you. What else has helped you connect with yourself? The meditations were super helpful.

I found them very healing. And so sacred is a word. They really helped me to connect with myself and

to visualize stepping into safety when that's really scary for me in real life. It helped me visualize

myself becoming empowered and accepting. I don't know what's going to happen. Also loving myself.

There's one where we revisit your younger self and you express love. I felt like it was so healing

and powerful for me. I really loved and valued the meditations. Yeah, I remember you messaged me

right after you did the I am just right meditation. And you said that you were crying. I assume

those were good tears. Oh, definitely. Yeah, it was the healing tears or you just had that moment.

You still love for this part of yourself that needed that love. I just I loved it. I wanted to do

those meditations so that women could process their emotions in a different way, which is similar

with the infographics and with metaphors, different types of content or services speak to women

in different ways. I'm really proud of BTR through BTR. We've created so many different avenues

for women to get educated about abuse. This podcast, obviously, which I think is the best way to get

educated about abuse because this podcast is mostly victim stories and hearing other women's

experience and realizing holy cow, that's what I'm going through to is so validating. And then

having those visual representations of the concepts that I teach on the podcast with the

infographics on Instagram and on our social media channels is so helpful. And the interaction

is what makes social media so powerful. And BTR is the only organization that teaches the

strategies of how to get to safety in such a detailed and practical way in the workshop,

which you can find at btr.org slash workshop. And then, of course, we never leave any woman alone

in this journey to get help implementing the strategies you learn in the workshop to get help

actually applying the concepts that you learn on social media or through this podcast. We have

online group sessions with coaches that I train personally. And in our group sessions,

women share from the heart and get real-time face-to-face feedback from our coaches and also the

other women in the group session. Our team is so incredible. We are here for you. We really care

and it's my goal and the goal of the whole BTR team to try to help every woman understand this.

We don't want anyone to be trapped in abuse. Like you, you've been able to apply this stuff and

get shelter from the storm. I'm so, so honored to hear your story. Thank you so much for,

thank you so much for coming on today. And thanks for all you've done for creating BTR.

Love this community. It's been so helpful to me. I'm really grateful.

If you've already purchased a copy of my book, Trauma Mama Husband Drama on Amazon,

please circle back and give it a five-star rating. A lot of women are searching for books to figure

out what to do about their husband and rating Trauma Mama will also help them find this podcast,

which is free to everyone. And of course, your donations help keep this podcast going.

Go to btr.org, scroll to the bottom and click on support the BTR podcast. Until next week,

stay safe out there.